2016 News Releases

TOPEKA – (July 25, 2016) – Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt last week met with Mexican legal authorities to continue discussing cooperative efforts to combat human trafficking, drug trafficking and other criminal conduct that crosses the international border and affects states like Kansas.

Schmidt and attorneys general from several other states participated in a binational exchange in Idaho with Mexican state attorneys general. The participants also included Mexico’s federal attorney general, Arely Gomez Gonzalez. The meeting was a follow up to an exchange last fall in Mexico City, which Schmidt also attended.

“These ongoing discussions build relationships and share information that strengthens the rule of law on both sides of the border,” Schmidt said. “By working together to combat criminal enterprises in Mexico before their effects cross the border, we promote public safety in Kansas.”

The exchange, formally known as the Conference of Western Attorneys General (CWAG) Alliance Partnership Binational State Attorney General Exchange, is coordinated with the U.S. State Department. The trainings it sponsors for Mexican legal authorities are one effort to support Mexico’s transition from its old inquisitorial criminal justice system toward a new adversarial court system that more closely resembles the system in the United States. That change is required by a 2008 amendment to the Mexican Constitution, and it is underway throughout the country.

The cost of the exchange is privately financed primarily by the CWAG Alliance Partnership, and not by Kansas tax dollars.